By: Spokesman Newsroom
BASSETERRE, St. Kitts– Chairman of Sugar Mas (St.Kitts-Nevis National Carnival) Noah Mills while speaking on a recent edition of ‘Voices’ aired live on WINN FM highlighted some new changes to fit the budget for 46th annual production.
“A lot of thing have been going on. We’ve implementing some new changes under the guidelines and advice to adjust the operational budget for Sugar Mas 46 within revised parameters. We’ve shifted around some things.”
Areas of change include the soca monarch competition, bar crawls, recycling of the 40-feet bar containers from Sugar Mas 45 to host a mas camp, privatising a pageant as well as hosting two shows at The Circus instead of the Sugar Mill at Warner Park whereby members of the public can attend for free.
Mills informed that that the two bar crawls on St.Kitts will be joined as one.
“…normally we would have two bar crawls- on St.Kitts that it because we are indeed having the one on Nevis. We would have the one that goes around the country and one that goes up St. Peter’s (plus) Frigate Bay. We’ve decided to merge that to sort of better manage fiscal outlay there.”
The Carnival Chairman revealed that the Best Of The Rest calypso show and the Female Calypso Competition will be moved to The Circus from the Sugar Mill venue.
“Ticket sales on revenue generated were always low. Actually, we were advised by some stakeholders since 2015 not to reintroduce those two shows. We have a different opinion and I think we won the negotiations for the last three carnivals including this one where we’re saying the female calypso show provides and needed forum for all females to not only showcase and compete but for grooming the young ones as well for when and nods teenager jumps over at 18 from the junior to the other forum , sometimes it’s a little bit formidable for her to think about going against the likes of Socrates and (Lord) Kut and (Richie) Buntin and all those fellows. So that forum is a special place for them.”
Mills continued: “Additionally, because we now we only accept 16 going into the semi-finals for the senior show and we have this year 64 registered, we’re talking about quite a number of calypsonians who form that best of the rest cluster so we need to give them an opportunity.”
Following the launch of Sugar Mas 46 on Friday 17th November, after formalities of that event, the female calypso competition will be held featuring the proud sounds Tent providing musical accompaniment.
The Carnival Chairman pointed out that “Other things that we’ve done to better manage fiscal operations” is to use the containers that were used as containerised bars at The Circus for a mas camp venue for Junior Carnival.
“We’re now going to be using them as a mas camp to create the junior carnival costumes. Of course we would have been in partnership and paying rent for a mas camp and it was a beautiful relationship …but again to try to save cost, we gonna be right there,” he noted.
He also told that “Other things that we’ve done, we’ve had to privatise the Caribbean carnival pageant and we are still providing all sort of resources to make sure it happens.”
The first annual Miss Carnival Caribbean Pageant was held for Sugar Mas 45 and was won by Khyla Brown from host country St.Kitts.
Mills, in speaking more him about the move to privatize that event stated: “Sometimes moving these events out of Sugar Mill where the higher overlay or infrastructural cost, by moving them you decrease that somewhat and make the show a little bit more manageable.”
In addressing a separate topic, he went on to indicate that “Another way for tightening controls in terms of cost and quality, we have decided to introduce the all-star band for calypso.”
He shared that originally, it was intended to have it done for the eliminations but that such will kick in for the semi-finals.
Mills also talked about the joining of the two soca segments-Power and Groovy.
“So all of these are to make sure that carnival as a product, as a production becomes tighter to enhance the overall quality and to better manage the financial resources of carnival,” he concluded.